Abstract:
Gaming and immersive virtual environments provide a new way to engage stakeholders during early stages of Systems Engineering lifecycle to help them reach a common mental model of the concept of operations. A weak link in the Systems Engineering lifecycle is often the connection between what the users need and what the system developers think the users need, together with a shared understanding of the operational environment and associated constraints and dependencies. The current system development environment calls for user needs to be specified in a Concept of Operations (CONOPS) document, which provides a foundation of future system capabilities and describes typical scenarios that it will encounter. Given the size and complexity of today’s systems, CONOPS development can take considerable time and effort, which can cause its production to be incomplete and insufficient. This introduces misunderstanding and miscommunication early in the Systems Engineering lifecycle. This talk will cover research underway to improve this shared understanding through the fusion of 3D gaming technology and Storyboarding.

Biography:
Dr. Cloutier has over twenty years of industry experience, and is associate professor of systems engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology. His research interests lie in System Architecture Patterns, OO systems engineering, architecting and systems modeling with UML & SysML, and modeling systems of systems